Twenty-two years.
26 months clean.

1 / 4·THE BEFORE

The Before

I grew up in Martinez, California. My life may have been considered somewhat sheltered when I was young. I was forced to go to church every Wednesday night and twice on Sunday. We didn't have TV growing up, just movies , and my parents would screen the PG ones before we were allowed to watch them. When PE teachers would teach the Macarena in school I had to sit on the side and watch because dancing was against my religion. When Halloween came around I wasn't allowed to trick-or-treat because it was the devil's holiday. Like I said, a little sheltered.

I loved school. I would always race on tests and strive for the best grades, which I typically got. The reason I'm telling you this is because of how quickly my world flipped upside down.

My parents started getting a divorce around age 10. After they split, it became a 50/50 custody battle. My dad was always working, and when he wasn't he was heavily drinking, so I was free to do whatever I wanted. My mom was also an alcoholic and let me do whatever I wanted. I had so much freedom out of nowhere, and you know what they say , idle time is the devil's playground.

First drink was at my dad's around 11 or 12 , me and a friend mixing whiskey with Sunny D. Horrible mistake but of course we drank it anyway. I started smoking cigarettes around the same time. By 13 I was smoking about a pack every two days. First time I tried weed was with my brother and his friends doing gravity bong rips outside with a cut-up Sunny D bottle and a bucket. That completely fucked me up. I remember being zoned out watching them play Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.

When I'd stay with my mom in those years it was at her boyfriend's house in a trailer park. On my 12th or 13th birthday I shot my sisters boyfriend's paintball gun once , without a paintball, just to see how it felt , and got kicked out for breaking the noise policy. My mom's solution was for me to sleep in a white Ford Bronco , same kind as OJ Simpson , parked on the street outside.

Eventually she got an apartment for us. Well, I thought it would be us. It was mostly me. My mom has back issues and has been on Vicodin, Norcos, morphine, and Somas since I was little. She kept huge bottles in her closet. My brother was over one day and decided to take some Somas. I took some with him. That was the first pill.

2 / 4·THE DESCENT

The Descent

I gravitated towards weed and alcohol around 13, only because I hadn't discovered my main yet. I met Francesca officially at Summit High School halfway through sophomore year, when I'd decided maybe I should at least get a diploma. I had a girlfriend at the time and she had a boyfriend. We started hanging out at school, and I'm pretty sure what gave us a little more gravity towards each other was when we were playing hacky sack and she bled through her pants and I gave her my sweatshirt to tie around her waist. Later that month at the white elephant exchange a kid named Greg gave Francesca some shrooms. She pulled me aside and asked if I wanted to do them with her , how could I say no to a beautiful girl?

That opened the gates. She came over to my house that day, and it turned out she used to do a lot of ecstasy. We got some pills and started rolling. She came back the next day, and this time we fucked. This lasted about two weeks. At that point we decided we should probably break up with the people we were with and just hook up. Spoiler alert, I am still with her and we are now happily married. We decided to quit the drugs and just stick to weed and alcohol, lol?

On my 18th birthday I found out Francesca was pregnant and we decided to keep the baby.

At 18 I was selling quite a bit of weed , it was illegal then so the money was decent. That year I got pulled over with weed, a scale, and paraphernalia. That started my year-and-a-half trial to my first felony.

Around the same time my brother started buying Norcos. Of course I started taking them, and that's when I discovered my main. Soon I was taking them daily, then 2 at a time, then 5. I'd chew them up to make them hit faster. I just loved the feeling , all my worries and anxiety just melted away, and on top of that I felt like Superman. At one point I was taking 30 to 35 a day. My friend Clayton introduced me to OxyContin , the 40s, 80s, the ones they made TV shows about. Basically any drug I took, I had to sell. Why wouldn't I? Buying in bulk is cheaper, you don't run out, and you basically use for free.

When oxys got harder to find, a client told me about Opanas , oxymorphone, way stronger than oxys or heroin. The first time I tried one, he shaved off maybe a tenth of a 40mg pill and I snorted it. Oh my fucking god. Warm, fuzzy, the best feeling I've ever felt. Of course I got addicted and started selling them too. Crazy fucking story. I became a pretty well-known Opana dealer in the area. Some people even started calling me Mr Opana.

Years went by like this. I was using so much my wife would have to wake me up with two crushed 40mg Opanas and a line of coke. It was literally insane. I was in and out of jail. I'd tuck pills in the boxer-brief pouch when I traveled, $10,000 worth of drugs in the trunk on some days. The SET team in Concord was on me hard.

By 22 I was about to hit one of my bottoms. Francesca had been gone for a little bit, I was going in and out of jail too much, my uncle had moved in and relapsed on meth. Opanas were drying up. My connect, who I'd spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with, said he found some and to meet him in Suisun City. It felt suspect, but when you're dependent on opiates you take that risk.

I parked at these apartments, met up with him, and he says we're going to meet his person. I follow him and all of a sudden there's a .45 shoved up my rib cage telling me to give up all my money. I had $5k on me. There was another gun on my connect , he gave up his money, and the second gun turned on my head. So I have a .45 on my ribs, a Glock on my head, and a knife in my pocket, calculating whether I could get out of this with my money , otherwise I was about to be in withdrawal. I gave it up. For some reason I tried to follow them after, turned a corner, and saw about 10 dudes pulling their guns out. I said fuck that and went back to my car.

That's why I started rolling with a sawed-off shotgun in my backpack.

I got pulled over not long after. The shotgun was with a friend doing a run, but I had warrants , they took me to jail. I spent 45 days waiting before I got in front of a judge and made a deal: time served, three years probation, joint suspended sentence. The catch was I had to claim 10 or 11 felonies , mostly possession and possession with intent to sell.

I ended up back at the same trailer park my mom had once gotten me kicked out of, after losing literally everything. I was clean on prescribed suboxone, going to AA and NA meetings I wasn't really feeling. I enrolled at Diablo Valley College , partly to start over, mostly for the financial aid. While I was going to classes I ran into someone I used to sell to who told me the craziest rumors had been going around about me. Some said I'd OD'd and died. Some said I'd been shipped off to prison. I got the financial aid, found a connect who fronted me 40 blues, and was off and runnin' again.

I started smoking the blues on foil with a straw because it hit differently. Quicker than snorting. The taste was gross at first, but after a while it became an acquired taste, kind of like burnt marshmallows. I got introduced to a girl named Rachel to sell some to. Later she hit me up and I went out to her apartment in San Francisco. We ended up using together. After I stayed the night she admitted she was an IV user and asked if I'd mind if she shot up. I was fine with it, but it intrigued me seeing how good she felt after.

This was one of the worst decisions of my life. We were already sleeping together and getting high together, so I figured why not. I don't like needles, but she prepped it for me, tied my arm off, found a vein, and WHOOSH , the best feeling I'd ever known, multiplied by 100, ran throughout my whole body. Like a warm cozy blanket fell over me. I dropped back on the bed taking it in. I woke up the next day and wanted more. We spent days shooting up my whole stash.

From there things blurred. I caught more charges. I went through drug court , they give you three chances at rehab before jail time, and I burned through the first two. The third time, the SET team rolled up while I was in basketball shorts and flip-flops about to walk my daughter to school. I asked them very nicely if I could please take my daughter inside before they arrested me. They asked me if I was going to run, in flip flops…

I made it through 90 days of rehab and left ready to take on the world. I wouldn't exactly say I was working the program to the best of my ability.

For the next stretch I was technically clean, but drinking heavily , a handle of vodka every two days at one point. I got into the union as an ironworker. I helped build skyscrapers in San Francisco and Oakland, got promoted to acting foreman, was running jobs. From the outside it looked like I'd made it. From the inside I was drunk every night and falling apart in slow motion.

Then one day my apprentice , who I didn't know also used to do heroin , asked if he could smoke some in the car on the way home. The first day I said sure. The second day I said fuck it, let me hit it. God damn did I miss that feeling.

There is a massive amount of shame a relapsed addict carries. But you don't feel it right after relapsing. That dread comes later, when you're hiding it from the people who love you.

Within weeks it was daily again. Francesca was using meth again. Eventually we were using together. I lost the job. I got into fraud to support our habit , bank accounts, fake IDs, credit cards, checks. I told myself I had morals. I wouldn't take from old people. I only pulled from FDIC-insured accounts. The things addicts tell themselves to keep doing the dirt they do is above and beyond.

Around 2020 heroin was getting harder to find. A lot of it was cut with fentanyl. I had heard the stories and had a stigma against it. It's almost funny the things addicts tell themselves , like thinking you're somehow above that certain drug or method of use. I eventually started smoking fentanyl. At first it was amazing , a bong rip did the same as injecting. Before long I was using multiple grams a day. Unless I was sleeping, it was rare I went 30 minutes without it.

We got evicted. Rented a U-Haul. Couldn't find a hotel that would take us. I pulled out of a parking lot and Pleasanton cops pulled me over at the light. I had three or four warrants, all three years old , I'd been on the run that whole time, living under other people's names.

On the ride to Contra Costa County, the officer driving me started asking me questions I hadn't asked myself in years. Why I did the things I did. How I needed to get my shit together for my daughter. Once I was on fentanyl my mentality had become I'm a user, I like using, that's that. I ended up bawling for five minutes.

I got booked into Martinez Detention Facility. I was supposed to wait 48 to 72 hours before taking suboxone or I'd go into precipitated withdrawal , every day of withdrawal compressed into one. After half a day, a new cellmate came in with meth. Someone in the jail offered me suboxone and I took it. Then he offered me meth and I took that too. I started feeling wrong. I subconsciously knew what was coming but didn't want to admit it, so I took more suboxone and more meth.

I told my cellie I wasn't feeling well, he needed to tell the cops. He ignored me until I wasn't looking too well and then tried , of course they ignored him. Not long after, I started seizing.

I woke up somewhere I didn't recognize. Things were blurry. There was a cop watching me. I asked where I was. He said the hospital. I'd been transported by ambulance and I don't remember any of it. I was in and out , wake up, vomit on myself, fall back asleep. Wake up to someone cleaning the vomit off me or changing my clothes. I felt worse than I'd ever felt in my life.

3 / 4·THE CLIMB

The Climb

My official clean date is June 12th, 2024.

I called my wife from West County Detention Facility in Richmond. I told her everything that had happened in the hospital. I told her I was looking at some time with the charges I had and my priors, and that I thought it was time we quit. I didn't expect her to quit right away , it's extremely hard to quit opiates on your own.

I got transferred to Marsh Creek , minimum security, closer to where Francesca was living. My lawyer told me there was a chance I could go to inpatient rehab instead of jail or prison. After a couple weeks of being clean and starting to feel like a person again, I made the decision: I was going to stay clean this time.

I started going to the AA and NA meetings they held inside. I'd never been into them. Then one week the guest speaker was someone I actually knew. I heard his story and recognized too much of myself in it. I almost cried , but I was in jail so I had to hold it back. That was one of the moments that pushed me in the right direction.

I went before the judge. He looked at my record and asked my lawyer why he should give me a shot at rehab when I had so many priors and had been on the run from warrants for three years. She did her job. He sentenced me to Diablo Valley Ranch, two years probation, and ten weeks of AA or NA meetings after I got out.

I went back to the farm to wait for a bed. While I was waiting, someone tested positive for COVID-19, which meant everyone needed to be tested. I felt fine, but if I had it that would delay rehab. I took the test and it came back positive. Are you serious? They shipped me off to Martinez Detention Facility and put me in a special cell where the water didn't work. I told the guards walking by and of course they didn't do anything. Can you believe that? I am sick with COVID and don't even have any water. I knew the guy in the cell next to me, so when he was on free time I asked him to fill up his cup and pour it through the crack in the door using a torn chip bag.

I finally tested clear and it was time to head to Diablo Valley Ranch. I was actually ecstatic to go to rehab since I actually wanted to be clean this time. I spent 30 days there and put in the work. Toward the end I shared my story in front of about 30 people. I was nervous as fuck. I have never been great at public speaking and I had never opened up about any of this. I was terrified. I got through it.

I would be lying if I told you I followed all the rules and everything was just peachy. Vapes weren't allowed, so my wife smuggled them and I'd pick them up around 4:30 in the morning before people woke up. I couldn't follow all the rules, but that's just how life is. I didn't magically change overnight. I put the work in and there were ups and downs.

I started little habits. Working out on a schedule. Picking a new word from the dictionary every morning, writing down the definition, trying to use it that day. Making my bed. New habits are challenging because people typically don't see the reward for a long time and give up before that happens. But habits compound, and thinking about these routines as wins made me feel like I was accomplishing something.

I got out and we both got rid of the rest of the drugs. Francesca made it about 12 hours before disappearing in the car without a word. I knew I couldn't continue to be around the drugs , my willpower just wasn't enough. I texted her that if she couldn't stop using I'd have to leave her. When she came home she told me she was too scared of the withdrawals. I did some research and found a way to skip the 48-hour wait , narcan first to knock the opiates off the receptors, then suboxone right after. We threw out the drugs again. I dosed her with narcan, watched for her pupils to blow out, and gave her the suboxone.

August 31st, 2024 was the last day she used. I am so proud of her.

We told our daughter we were clean. She was 14 and old enough to know her parents were drug addicts, right? I always thought I did a great job hiding it from her , and actually we did, because until we told her she didn't know we were using. At least we did that right.

It's a humbling experience to hit rock bottom and end up living with your in-laws. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful they took us in. Not everyone has that.

A month later I finished outpatient and went back in front of the judge. I was anxious , my lawyer had wanted 90 days of inpatient and I'd only done 30. I don't remember exactly what the judge said. Life can be foggy coming out of years of heavy drug use. But it was something about how most people don't come back from how deep into the drug lifestyle I was, and that I should be proud and take this opportunity to change my life. I started crying in the courtroom. That's exactly what I planned to do.

A note about the AA and NA meetings I had to complete. It's a spiritual program and I'm not really into it. I'm saying this in case any other addict reading this doesn't connect with it either. I don't use those programs anymore and I'm still doing well. There are other ways.

Honestly, for a while after rehab, I wasn't doing much. Motivation was lacking. I was just trying to get by. And that's perfectly fine, it's a process.

I was planning on going back to ironworking but had the idea of going to college. I always wanted a computer science degree. I enrolled at Diablo Valley College for Spring 2025. I was terrified to go back to school , it had been 16 years since high school. The first semester I put in the work and got a 3.583 GPA.

I had messed with programming before, but it was fun to learn from the bottom. I felt proud of every little program I wrote to turn in. The first three were called myCity.cpp, myDays.cpp, and myProfile.cpp , beginner exercises, the kind every CS student writes. Programs that print your city, the days of the week, your name. Nothing impressive. But I'd written them. I'd typed every line, I'd run them, and they worked. myCity.cpp wasn't much. But it was the first thing I'd built in years that wasn't for using or selling.

Around this time I also started going to the gym. Life was going great, from an outside perspective. After using drugs for so long, it can take a very long time for your brain to rewire itself. I was getting the work done for classes and sometimes going to the gym, but it was hard. I was depressed. I'd procrastinate to the last minute. I'd binge TV shows instead of doing anything. But I had a goal and a plan, and I pushed on. On days I didn't want to go to the gym, I'd tell myself just go for 5 minutes. Once I was there I'd usually do the full workout. I did this to build the habit. Habits turn into routines. Routines are what make productive people.

My daughter's story isn't mine to tell. But the relationship is, and it's different than it was. We have real talks now beyond surface stuff like "how was school" , that's all I managed to do while I was high or wanting to move onto my next use. We have real ones, sometimes hard ones. She has opened up a lot about things she used to keep deep inside and I'm able to listen. She's about to graduate high school. Her grades have come up. She decided to start therapy and she's putting in the work. I am prouder of her and what she's accomplished than anything I've done in the past two years. I'm now the parent who shows up, instead of being the parent who was technically there. That's not nothing. That's the whole point.

She's seven months away from being the age I was when Francesca got pregnant and I caught my first felony. She's doing a lot better than I was.

My wife and I are doing great now. There is still work to do but we are in a much better place than we were. We have been together on and off , mostly on , for over half my life. High school sweethearts are getting rarer these days. She decided to go to Diablo Valley College when I did and is pursuing a criminal justice degree with plans to become a lawyer. Our trust is back and strong, and we are both grateful for the life we have now. We've been together 20 years and 4 months as of writing this. Still married. Still climbing.

I have completed multiple semesters of college now and am building my own apps. I go to the gym 4 to 5 days a week and have had a huge transformation physically , not just how I look, but how I feel. As of today I have been clean for 794 days. That number is important for what I'm about to say.

I still struggle. There are days I don't want to get out of bed. Days I feel like I'm not doing enough. There are ups and downs , it's completely normal in life. I put my best foot forward every day and keep doing what I can.

I love the life I'm building right now. And it's just beginning.